Transplant recipient: Every day is a gift

Woman promotes organ donation, honors donor who saved her life

Love, now living in Dalhart, and her husband, Chance, promote organ donation.

SAN ANGELO, Texas - Three years ago Sarah Pipkin Love didn't know what the future held for her.

Born with a heart disease, Love's health began to fail in 2009, when she was 23. In June 2010 she and her family got an answer to many prayers when she received a call saying a donor heart had been found.

"When I was on the way to the hospital (for the transplant), I was praying for the family," Love said in an interview in 2011. "Before I said anything, I said, ‘Lord, please keep them and hold them; I can't imagine what they're going through.'"

The donor, Dillon Roberts, 14, was killed in a dirt bike accident in Floresville, near San Antonio. His decision to be an organ donor saved the lives of five people, including Love.

Love has not only survived but thrived after the transplant. Since recovering from the surgery in 2010, she has run a marathon, competed in her first triathlon and twice participated in the Lone Star Circle of Life Bike Tour — a 600-mile bike ride throughout Texas that raises awareness for organ donation.

In the days leading up to each event, she wears T-shirts promoting organ donation, many with Dillon's name on them.

"It's not just me doing this anymore," she said. "Dillon and I are doing it together."

Love doesn't just remember Dillon on T-shirts. When her husband, Chance, proposed to her last year, he gave her an engagement ring with three diamonds and three hearts on it.

"The middle diamond was from his granddad's wedding ring, and two diamonds were from his grandma's ring," she said.

Beneath each diamond is a small heart molded into the gold — "One for (Chance), one for me and one for Dillon," Love said.

The couple used the three-heart theme for their wedding too, to symbolically include Dillon.

"If it wasn't for that young man, then I essentially would not be married today. That's as simple as you can put it," Chance Love said.

Dillon's parents and sister Alexa attended the wedding.

"Mark (Dillon's father) gave us a stone made into three hearts," Sarah Pipkin Love said.

She said Mark thanked them for allowing them to be part of her family.

"It's been a huge blessing on both sides, and continues to be," she said.

As family members came up to light candles for family members who had died, sister Alexa, now 14, lit a candle for Dillon.

"We had them sit up close, near our family," Sarah Pipkin Love said.

Now living in Dalhart, north of Amarillo, Love continues to attend speaking engagements to promote organ donation, with her husband at her side.

"She's a very outgoing person, and she does so much to promote organ donation," said Michelle Segovia, senior public relations coordinator for the Texas Organ Sharing Alliance.

"Awareness is everything in our line of work," she said. "Nine out of 10 people think organ donation is a good idea but don't know what to do with that information.

"Sarah has been a great face for organ donation," Segovia said. "We appreciate everything she does."

Love said she makes every effort to live every day to the fullest.

"After you go through something like that, it's not hard to see every day as a gift."